Hidden elements

If you’re interested in logo design then Logo, from Lawrence King Publishing is a great reference and it’s not just image after image, a lot are accompanied with an insight from the designer or client into the idea behind the logo. But what caught my attention was something less remarkable and which had been staring at me in the face all along and somehow, through looking at it in a different context ie. in a book and displayed in black and white, it made me spot something ‘new’.

Call me daft but I’ve watched Formula 1 since i was old enough to get downstairs at 6 in the morning to watch it, but never did I regard the F1 logo as any good, in fact I thought it was a bit naff (which the typography generally is). Yet when I flicked through Logo, I noticed straight away what i had missed, that the 1 in F1 is the white space in between the F and the speedy swooshes opposite! Where did that come from?

Another one I noticed was the playstation logo, I had never realised that the strange shadow of the P was an S!

I have no idea how I missed theses little touches (seen as they are so obvious), I suppose that when something has been in your line of sight for so long you just don’t take note of it anymore, you just recognise it’s shape.

Here I a few more nice and not so obvious examples of typographic trickery from the book including one that for obvious reasons, I wish I had done.